Category: Link

A couple of godless Kiwi’s in my ‘hood have decided to take on the challenge of keeping religion out of schools. An excellent cause to fight for to be sure and as you can expect, not inconsiderable resistance to the idea from the sheeple and religionuts.

Stephen Minhinnick has done an excellent job categorising the bleats of outrage in his post at:

The summary is: School breaks US constitution by promoting Christianity, school girl sue’s school, school girl wins, Christians threaten to assault her, murder her or express how delighted they will be if she had to be harmed.

Jessica Ahlquist - The winner.

Read the whole post at that link, it seems to be by her uncle and it lays out the Christian love she’s experiencing nicely.

I guess it’s only Christians who can’t see the problems with their behaviour. It is, after all, only Christians who seem to be unable to read the Bible, the manual they allege to live their lives by.

To be a Christian is to be a hypocrite. That’s all there is to it. “Not all Christians are hypocrites!”, I hear some people scream. Well, actually, all Christians ARE hypocrites on some level; some more so than others I’ll grant, but fundamentally there are some pretty clear instructions in the Bible from their god that not a single one of them follow or even attempt to follow. I go over one or two of the blindingly obvious ones in this post: I hate religion but love I god and a couple in this one: Christianity: conveniently forgetting the inconvenient

Am I surprised Christians act like this? No. But I am very happy that a teenager and the US justice system can at least see what millions of supposedly neighbour loving, adult Christians can not.

I particularly liked the paragraph quoted below; it put’s the problem of religion into a perspective I had not really considered in this way before. The things that make religion dangerous and wrong are the thought process and the implementation of the religious ideology: conformity, worship, authoritarian hierarchical organisation, an absolute dictator as the ruler, obedience without question. Other ideologies that follow a similar format are just as wrong:

Whatever else may be wrong with our world, it remains a fact that some of the most terrifying instances of human conflict and stupidity would be unthinkable without religion. And the other ideologies that inspire people to behave like monsters — Stalinism, fascism, etc. — are dangerous precisely because they so resemble religions. Sacrifice for the Dear Leader, however secular, is an act of cultic conformity and worship. Whenever human obsession is channeled in these ways, we can see the ancient framework upon which every religion was built. In our ignorance, fear, and craving for order, we created the gods. And ignorance, fear, and craving keep them with us.

They wish to export democracy to the rest of the world, by force if the rest of the world isn’t amenable to their humble suggestion. If the American government had a penny for ever time the words ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ were used by an American to describe what is great about America they wouldn’t have any debt at all. Democracy, freedom, liberty is the cornerstone of everything that is supposed to be good about America.

The irony is that what Christians believe the order of the world to be after they die, is essentially Stalinism. The world defenders of liberty and justice and champions of democracy are frothing at the mouth to join the ultimate fascist organisation in the despotic state of Heaven:

Noun: Stalinism
A form of government in which the ruler is an absolute dictator (not restricted by a constitution, laws or opposition etc.)

Noun: fascism
A political theory advocating an authoritarian hierarchical government (as opposed to democracy or liberalism)

Noun: Despotism
1. Dominance through threat of punishment and violence
2. A form of government in which the ruler is an absolute dictator (not restricted by a constitution, laws or opposition etc.)

“God” is an absolute dictator in an authoritarian, hierarchical government and if you don’t agree with him you will be punished with the ultimate violence… forever.

They will fight to the death against Stalinism, fascism and despotism… just to spend eternity in a despotic, fascist, Stalinist state. Christians, you will never cease to amaze me. I would say amuse, but the thought of spending eternity in North Korea isn’t really something to laugh about.

To paraphrase alleged divine insight: “Humanity, forgive them; for they comprehend not what they claim”.

Just read an awesome post by Canadian Atheist on the technologies that you can no longer use if you happen to believe in the creation story since the science used in these technologies also disprove the Biblical creation story.

The scientific principles are so inherent in the design and functionality of some popular technologies that they literally would not work without them. Therefore, this message is for those who believe the creation story, and/or that the earth is only 6000 years old, and/or that microevolution is still debatable and not proven, etc. (I’d like to generalize by saying all biblical accounts, but there are just so many that have nothing to do with science or facts). If you are a person described by the beliefs I’ve just mentioned, PLEASE PAY ATTENTION!

The post goes on to state that the science used in Cell Phones, GPS, Microwaves, Refrigerators, Speed Measuring Devices, Radio-Isotope Cancer Detection and Treatment, X-Rays, Vaccinations, Potable Water and Solar Panels also disprove the creation story.

Strange? A coincidence? No, not really, the creation story was written by bronze age sheep herders. How could they have known they were so wrong (I’d go for ‘divine inspiration’ but clearly they got none of that)?

Like this:

I just read a post by Sam Harris and he makes a couple of good points. Sam thinks that Breivik was probably not a fundamentalist Christian which is fair enough. That he was a Christian I don’t doubt though. This bit was pretty interesting:

The emergence of “Christian” terrorism in Europe does absolutely nothing to diminish or simplify the problem of Islam—its repression of women, its hostility toward free speech, and its all-too-facile and frequent resort to threats and violence. Islam remains the most retrograde and ill-behaved religion on earth. And the final irony of Breivik’s despicable life is that he has made that truth even more difficult to speak about.